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When Kenny Glaze first started showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in the 1960s, little was known about the degenerative brain disorder.

Glaze lived in Watertown with his wife Bobbie and their daughters Sheree and Mitzi from 1946-1974. He was one of the first Watertown residents to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Glaze, who was active in many aspects of the Watertown community, worked for Midland National Life Insurance company. He was asked to step down from his position of administrative vice president after he began acting differently and forgetting things.

“In a smaller town like Watertown, everybody knew what was going on and it was embarrassing to not have any explanation for why he was acting the way he was,” Sharee Glaze Smeby said.

Smeby and Mitzi Glaze Heath said the changes were unmistakable by 1968. Glaze had become aggressive and had almost completely withdrawn from the family.

“He was the most kind, gentle man that you could ever imagine. Loving, caring, and his personality just totally changed,” Sharee said. “I’m sure it was frustration. He became so angry.”

The Glaze family thought maybe he was showing symptoms of depression or what would now be identified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his time in World War II. Mitzi remembers thinking he would “come out of it somehow.”

Glaze received an official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in 1974.

“I was given the diagnosis in a hospital waiting room filled with people,” Bobbie Glaze Custer wrote in her book, “I Choose to Continue.” “The doctor said, ‘Your husband has Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive, irreversible brain deterioration, for which there is no known cause or cure. That’s the way it is. You’ll have to go on from there.’”

Sharee remembered another neurologist visit, where a psychiatrist explained Alzheimer’s in an elevator, saying there was no solution.

“It was like several slaps across the face,” Sharee said. “The neurologist didn’t even have the courage to come out and talk to us.”

Both daughters said it was equally as difficult to see their mother struggle with caring for their father as it was to see him fade away. Glaze lost his insurance and pension when he lost his job. Their mother and farther moved to the Twin Cities in Minnesota to be closer to their daughters and to medical centers.

Glaze wasn’t yet 60, so no nursing homes would admit him. He also would become violent and was unpredictable. He was taken to a mental hospital at one point. Finally, a doctor suggested they try to get him to a Veterans Affairs medical center. He was admitted to the St. Cloud, Minnesota, VA Hospital, where he stayed for almost 10 years until his death in 1983, at age 67.

“When we finally got the word that he had passed, it was such a mixed blessing. We had prayed that God would be merciful and not let him live on because he had no life,” Sharee said. “But when the time comes, there’s such a huge hole there.”

Bobbie decided to take her grief and make something of it, finding other people in the Twin Cities whose loved ones were suffering from Alzheimer’s, too. Their support group became the Minnesota Association for Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases in 1979.

“Mother pulled her boot straps up, like she’d done most of her life,” Sharee said. “She wasn’t about to let anyone else have to go through what we did.”

Bobbie went on to help create the national Alzheimer’s Association in 1980.

Sharee said people from all over the world would call her mother to ask for help. She recalled her mother once calling a state’s governor to get an Alzheimer’s patient admitted to a nursing home, and another time, calling a stranger’s church to ask them to care for her while she suffered depression from losing her husband to Alzheimer’s.

“My mother was a gutsy woman,” said Sharee. “To think that the storms that came were weathered so beautifully. My mother was not one to sit still and let the world go by.”

Bobbie died in 1991.

Heath recalls how difficult her father’s progression into Alzheimer’s was for the entire family. She said it affected their relationships with each other in an unhealthy way.

“It’s not just the person and their caretaker (who) are involved. It’s everybody that loves that person,” Mitzi said.

She said she is still angry with the doctors and their lack of empathy for her family during her dad’s years of hospital visits. This was one of the main motivators for Bobbie to work with the Alzheimer’s Association. Sharee volunteered with the Alzheimer’s Association in Red Wing, Minnesota, but Mitzi said for her, it was too difficult.

“I just needed to not think about Alzheimer’s all the time,” Mitzi said.

Now, Sharee, 77, and Mitzi, 69, are returning to Watertown from their homes in Minnesota for the Alzheimer’s Walk on Saturday. They want to honor both of their parents and support the people of their hometown.

“She got a lot of support from Watertown once people knew what was going on,” Sharee said. “Her heart was really in Watertown. Both her and my dad, that’s where their hearts were.”

The Watertown Alzheimer’s Walk is at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 14 at Jenkins Living Center. Registration for the free one-mile walk begins at 9 a.m. A raffle will be drawn at 9:50 a.m. and a balloon release will also occur.

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